Society...HB reader writes article "Chibok:Beyond sovereignty and patriotism"

     “Dignity refers to a person’s sense of
self worth. Indignation arises when
something happens to offend that
sense of self worth. Indignation in this
sense extends and engenders a feeling
of solidarity. Little wonder this
unconscionable act of Boko Haram has
elicited a global response“.
      LIKE the Kwale incident which the late
literary icon, Chinua Achebe, cited as
the turning point in the Nigeria-Biafra
war, the Chibok abduction would also
mark the greatest undoing of the Boko
Haram sect. The quest to rescue the
over 200 school girls has since taken
a global dimension but the criticisms
that trail Federal Government’s
acceptance of foreign assistance
towards finding the missing girls is a
pointer to our propensity to politicise
everything. From politicians, to the
academia, even some religious leaders
have all frowned at what some of them
believe is a surrender of the nation’s
sovereignty. The counter criticisms
that followed have been, to say the
least, most befitting. In an era when
the world wide conquest of liberal
democracy has brought to the fore the
need for people to live together, seeing
themselves rather as citizens of the
world, some persons still entertain
sentiments in the name of sovereignty.
    The will to live together
presupposes, not the fear of an
impending danger, but a will to
achieve a common task – conquest of
freedom. Living together in this context
does not mean occupying the same
place in space. It does not mean,
either, being subjected to the same
physical or external conditions or
pressures, or to the same pattern of
life. Living together means sharing as
human beings, not as beasts. That is,
sharing with basic free acceptance, in
certain common sufferings and in a
certain common task. Common sense
would tell us that the most significant
synonym of living together is suffering
together. Experience has shown that
men do not enter into a political
society simply to share a common
suffering out of love for each other.
Common suffering is accepted out of
love for the common task and the
common good.
The offer by the governments of
France, USA, Israel, China, Britain, et al
to assist the Nigerian government in
rescuing the missing girls, and the
latter’s acceptance is a bold statement
that the will to achieve a world-wide
common task ought to be strong
enough to entail a will to share in
certain common suffering made
inevitable by that task. The feeling of
indignation by these foreign
governments is never because of their
military might but because the victims
– innocent school girls are not being
treated with dignity, the worth they, the
foreign governments, believe the girls
are due as human beings. Dignity
refers to a person’s sense of self
worth. Indignation arises when
something happens to offend that
sense of self worth. Indignation in this
sense extends and engenders a feeling
of solidarity. Little wonder this
unconscionable act of Boko Haram has
elicited a global response.
It is the height of incivility for a
Nigerian (in this case an elder
statesman) to say that any patriotic
Nigerian ought to question the decision
of the Federal Government. It is
baffling how cunning Nigerian
politicians can be just to score cheap
political point. Patriotism indeed!
Patriotism may have been a virtue in
the ancient world when it compelled
men to serve the highest ideal of those
days. Patriotism cannot be a virtue
nowadays when it requires of men an
ideal exactly opposite to that of our
religion and morality. It admits the
dominion of one country over all
others, and not the equality and
fraternity of all men. What of the
persons sent by these foreign
governments, what happened to their
sense of patriotism? This is indubitably
a vice and not a virtue. The sentiment
of patriotism is evidently uncalled for
these days (much less in the attempt
to find the Chibok girls) because there
is neither material nor moral
foundation for its conception.
Patriotism is chiefly impossible today
because even the dullest and most
unrefined of men must see the
complete incompatibility of patriotism
with the moral law by which we live.
    In writing this, I lay no claim to being
neither a professional writer nor a true
embodiment of world political messiah.
I am merely thinking aloud;
dispassionately and within the
permissible limits of human wisdom.
One can rightly say it is an irresistible
attempt to reflection on the dialectical
growth of world politics. On what
ground, and for what reason can a
person, say a Nigerian or Kenyan, fail
to stop the killing of a Spaniard (if the
opportunity presents itself) when he is
well aware, however, uneducated he
may be, that the Spaniard or Spain
against whom his patriotic animosity
is excited are not barbarians but
human beings like him, maybe a
Christian like himself, and like him
desirous of peace? Sincerely, I see no
reason for Nigerians to “feel ashamed”
over this development.
In what terms can one, in this
contemporary world, express the
patriotism of an Irish man living in the
United States, who by his religion
belongs to Rome, by his nationality to
Ireland, by his citizenship to the United
States? Indeed, one can only
remember what we profess as
Christians and merely as men, those
fundamental moralities by which we
are directed in our social, family and
personal existence, and the position we
place ourselves in the name of
patriotism in order to see what a
degree of contradiction we have placed
on our conscience and our opinion.
   The emergence of liberal democracy
depicts concepts like patriotism as the
cruel tradition of an outlived period
because democracies do not raise
arms against one another. The
brotherhood of nations represents an
ideal which is becoming ever more
intelligible and more desirable to
manking.
At a time when groups and organisations
across the globe campaign for the
unconditional release of these innocent
girls, the publication is a mere phrase
when we ask for solution. I join other
well-meaning citizens of the world to
plead with the Boko Haram sect to;
    #Bring Back Our Girls!
 
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